


Tremolo

by Dimdive



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Aligned Continuity - Freeform, Canon Universe, Cybertronian Civil War, Distrust, Emotional Hurt, I will keep uploading chapters even though I'm getting no feedback just because, Moral Dilemmas, Original Character(s), Pre-Canon, Psychological Trauma, Violence, War, guess I just have to deal with that
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-15 09:20:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28561209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dimdive/pseuds/Dimdive
Summary: "The smoke that swirled from the rubble had still not quite subsided and surrounded the single-storey, long building like a dome. Rock-colored walls rose from the ground, smoothed out by winds that hadnot been agitated since stellar cycles. Although the laboratory was probably still from the early days of the war, it had a sinister evaporation, an aura of terror that united contradictory exclamations in the otherwise inconspicuous block."There is nothing left to do for them than fight. Survive, on this dead planet. But they messed up, and now they have to decide between their lives and those of their comrades.Left on Cybertron it was the goal of one small group of Autobots to occupy one of Shockwaves laboratories. But someone informed the Decepticons that they were coming, and now two of them are trapped inside the collapsed building.How can one live in a destroyed world? And will they find the traitor before it is too late?
Kudos: 2





	1. Failure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To explain the setting: In the Aligned continuity Optimus and Megatron left Cybertron with most of their respective followers. Shockwave got control of the (winning) Decepticons, the rest of the Autobots tried to hold their position under the leadership of Ultra Magnus. Energon was rare, 'Cons occupied the larger cities and hunted the refugees in the countryside.

They toppled into the low ruins as if Unicron was after them personally.

"Slag!" Firesheaf cursed loudly and immediately jumped back at the door, his weapon pointed at an invisible enemy. "What was that?"  
Of the other three mechas that had followed him into the room, none had an answer. Joltline, the eldest of them, clutched his shoulder with closed optics, a thin slung of blue Energon running down his formerly dark green armor. Flipswitch groaned next to him, trembling against the wall.

"Have they... From where... How could they know we were coming?" Firesheaf asked again into the room, folding his weapon back into his orange arm when he was sure there was no danger. Behind him, Purplebeam turned towards the injured Joltline and pulled the servo off his shoulder to look at the wound. Flipswitch just rubbed his face plates tightly.  
"Do you think Steelglide and Grindlight are still alive?" he asked softly.

The light of the shots and the quake of the ground when the ceiling had collapsed over their helmets still hung in the air. They had not seen the other two autobots die. They hadn't heard them screaming either, but it was unlikely that they'd even screamed. Wreckers were tough, after all.  
"Nobody can kill them that quickly." Joltline looked up with bite-biting dentas. "But I doubt they got it out."

Purplebeam just put a small smelting patch over his gunshot wound, the old mech grumbled as it pulled up with a hiss and connected to the injured metal.  
"No chance," she said with the shake of the helmet, "the whole hangar has collapsed."

"It must have been the acid rain. The whole building was dilapidated. No wonder they left it," Firesheaf frowned. "Just that they obviously didn't leave it."  
Joltline checked the movement of his shoulder and straightened up with a chuckle. "Or someone told them we were coming."

It suddenly became quiet, no one dared to look at the other ones.  
Firesheaf activated a small lamp and placed it in the middle of the otherwise almost empty space. Only behind a split wall panel did they hide some ammunition and other weapons for safety reasons, or in the case they could return to get it.  
He looked into the darkening sky one last time, dirty clouds turning over the rough land. Presumably there would soon be another acid storm, hopefully the roof of the old building would hold, because they surely couldn't get away here before. The isolated other houses, which as the last proof testified that a village had once been located here, did not look very steadfast.

In the distance, thin plumes of smoke rose from the lab that they had wanted to occupy. To the left of the horizon, the lights of Stanix flashed in the feverishly exhausted glow, on the right the Magnesium Mountains stretched out as black silhouettes against the restless sky.  
Firesheaf turned away and squealed a loose metal plate in front of the entrance of the ruin to prevent the light from inside from betraying her. Inside, he began to run up and down, casting sharp shadows on the wall. The remaining four Autobots looked at him from their seats on the rubble-covered ground. 

"What are we supposed to do now?" Flipswitch nervously nervously, his knees tightened,small firearm rested in his lap, ready to take someone's life with a targeted shot.  
Firesheaf stopped and confusedly pulled the optics limits together. "I have no idea."  
"But..."  
"I don't know more than you! Steelglide led this operation, he had the communicator, he was in command! I... I just have... I'm just the Scout!" Firesheaf kneaded his servos with a frantic look. 

"Nobody blames you," Purplebeam interrupted before getting even more into rage. "No one was to blame. But we have to do something."  
"Oh," he japped, almost hysterically. The excitement had subsided and now the fear was high in him. "Really? We need to do something? Do you have any idea what we could do then?"  
"The Decepticons are e  
verywhere, we have no Energon, hardly any weapons and wounded," Joltline said, looking at his own arm. "We are under no one's command, our troops have been decimated and the most violent acid storm I have seen since the occupation of the Quintessons is brewing over our helmets. We can't retreat anywhere and reach no one because there are no more safe lines. Even if the wreckers knew where we were, they wouldn't help us, let alone be able to."

Around him, the Autobots stiffened and all the energy egave from their limbs.  
"We have two options: stay here and slowly perish, or put everything on one card."

Firesheaf crouched next to him, his facial expression unreadable. "What's your plan?"


	2. Strangers?

"That is a terrible plan."

Firesheaf leaned against the wall next to the door with his face warped, drumming on his crossed arms. 

"It's the only one we have..." Purplebeam muttered from the opposite side of the room. Her yellow visor was flashing in the artificial light of the lamp as she lowered the helmet. 

"Anyway. We are too few."

The four Autobots sat in the dilapidated ruins of a former house, presumably abandoned long before the war had even begun. Outside, a violent acid storm continued to brew, the air was heavy with hydrogen ions. 

They were all scratched, smothered and miserable, their eyes sticking to the ground. Fought so long, lost so much. At some point, they had hoped that everything would go well, that they would win the war. Now they sat here, abandoned to suffocate by the dust.

Their end had come, and this knowledge weighed very heavily.  
"Should have come sooner or later," Joltline sighed, squealing." I've lived beyond my time anyway."

Firesheaf grumbled and pushed back the metal plate that replaced the door to squeeze out. He closed the ruins behind him and carefully stepped a few steps out onto the hilly plain. The sky had darkened even further, which made its blue biolights stand out. They had become dull throughout the war, along with its orange-grey armor.   
He rubbed his face plates with flickering spark, unable to calm down.

 _I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die._  
Stop it.

He defiantly began to walk around the ruins, always keeping in their shadows, looking for any Decepticons. The ground was uneven and he had to climb over half-buried metal struts that blocked his path. 

There was no suspicious movement between the isolated other ruins, although he would have expected the Decepticons to follow them. Not even refugees seemed to be going to this part of Cybertron, scared of the cruel attacks from roaming 'Cons. No, the only thing that had walked around here was the corpses which were stacked rusting along the side of the road. 

For a long time he looked in the opposite direction of the ruins, to the south, where Kaon had to lie somewhere. His optics noticed something, a group of tiny lights that were constantly moving towards them... Slag.  
Firesheaf plunged back into the ruins, where helpless silence still reigned. 

"Someone is coming up to us. From the south, small group, on foot."  
Immediately the others were on their feet too, with Joltline visibly tormented.   
"Decepticons?" Flipswitch asked, voice scraping close to panic, unashered his weapon.   
"I don't know."

Firesheaf watched as the three mechas approached the abandoned village. The others were ready to react to everything, hidden behind their small base. The eternal silence gnawed at them, perhaps even more hungry than they were. Exhaustion pulled their feet to the ground, but they were not yet allowed to rest. But soon.

Two of the mechas were very large and chunky, probably tanks or other heavy machinery. They seemed to have been half made of spare parts and were so dirty that they could only be distinguished from the landscape thanks to their optics. The third was a lot smaller than the other two, but not less dirty. All three were heavily loaded with all sorts of weapons, with cannon tubes on their backs and bullets aroun their hips. They looked grim and determined - just determined to do what?

::I don't think they're Decepticons. Maybe merchants, perhaps, or just refugees, if we are lucky. Pretty heavily armed refugees:: he sent via COM channel to the rest of the force. 

::Should we surprise them?:: Answered Purplebeam from her hiding place behind the splintered, rust-red corner. Thanks to her visor, she was able to process the brightest impressions of light without any problems, a memento of her time in the factories, but everything blurred in the distance. Firesheaf could have made the three mechas up and she wouldn't have noticed. 

::We wait. If they just move on, we'll let them go. If they have come because of us we are trying to settle this peacefully, is that clear? We don't have the capacity to fight like this::

Dozens of endless kliks passed, in which Firesheaf had to force itself to break down his current position.  
Primus, he was so fed up with this. The damn fighting. Eternal hunger. When was the last time he had a half-full tank? He couldn't even remember the feeling of it! What it was like not to hope every day that the war would finally come to an end, in whatever form. They had been overrun. One by one, killed, shot, crushed, torn, Primus, all their faces burned into his memories! Why, why him? Was it his fate to carry in himself the memory of better times, of better people? A crude time capsule? For whom?

Yes, for whom? Who were they fighting for? Optimus Prime had left her a long time ago, along with most of the Autobots. Ultra Magnus had sent them out to nothingness, for nothing. They haven't fought for them for a long time, no. They had been forced early on to give up the last bit of self for the bigger goal. _Till all are one._

Yes, the exhaustion sat deep in his protoform. Presumably, she would never give way to it again. But if he couldn't fight for himself, it was still for others.  
::Everything will be fine, folks::, he assured the Autobots without looking in their direction. They didn't answer, but he knew they had heard it. 

The three unknown ones came closer and closer and finally reached the foothills of the village. Still, they did not seek cover at any time, they proceeded with such self-assurance that they seemed invulnerable. Firesheaf ducked even deeper into the rubble of the ruins, digging the servos into the dirt so as not to slip away. Metal sims glided over his pedes with almost silent clatter and sang a song about days gone by.

First he could hear their steps, dull, then their voices.

"... sure? Traces are still not visible," it said, deep from the right along the road.  
"Of course not." That voice was quieter, more thoughtful. "They know how to cover their tracks, or just leave none directly."  
"Is this a nod to anything?"  
"Do you think the Prime's message came through to them?" a third voice interjected, and Firesheaf froze.

 _Message from the Prime...?_  
What kind of message? From Optimus Prime? Had he given orders, said something, would he come back to Cybertron?

His thoughts were sumbing and his spark was pulsating faster than ever before. He couldn't move, what message?

"Forget it. Didn't see the clouds? Nothing can get through with such deposits, no chance."

The news, they needed the message, were they Autobots?

Now they came to light behind the wall, the three mechas. Heavily armed, dented, smeared with soot. No one even looked in Firesheaf's direction, they just kept walking, the smallest one at the front.

Before he knew what he was doing, Firesheaf stumbled out of his hiding place with wide steps and rushed towards them. They reacted almost immediately, swirling around with raised weapons, but he was faster, slipping under their chunky arms and pushing his blaster against the helmet of the smallest mech.   
The azure optics stood out from the grey face of the stranger like freshly shed energon. The streamlined Cybertronier, whose armor had probably been light green at times, cautiously leaned back. Firesheaf's glowing blaster followed his movement, smiling with clenched dentas.

"If you don't want me to smash your processors, you'll tell me everything about this message. And do it fast."


	3. We need a plan

Firesheaf faced the three mechas. They all shared grim facial expressions, no one moved. The two tanks held their rifles at the bronze-orange Scout, the weapons vibrating with barely held energy. The only thing that stopped them was the blaster that pushed against their leader's helmet.  
"Okay, slowl down." The mech blinked at Firesheaf with pinched optics, his gaze scurrying down to the Autobot symbol on his translucent chest plate. "We are Autobots too."

Firesheaf did not dare to turn his gaze away to look for anby red symbol. A trick to distract him? 

The mech in front of him hissed in annoyance and carefully turned his helmet backwards. "Hookhide, would you...?"  
With a quick movement, the mech standing on the left behind him rubbed over the chest plate. The dirt disappeared and revealed the sigille they all knew so well. Red on brown. 

Firesheaf stared up at him and allowed the other two to confirm their affiliation with a blink.   
" _Why, in Primu's name, don't you carry this openly?_ " Firesheaf quiped, finally lowering his blaster while he strangers did the same.  
"Because Decepticons shoot refugees quickly, but they shoot faster at Autobots. My name is Laserspin." 

The bright green Cybertronier turned away and looked around in the darkening, dead landscape. "What are you doing here?"  
::All right, they belong to us::, sent Firesheaf to the rest of his own troupe and saw them appear behind the ruins they had used as a hiding place. "We got command to occupy one of Shockwave's former labs and search for all the useful things. But, hm, the 'Cons were prepared."  
He briefly checked how close his troupe had come.   
"Maybe we're dealing with a spy."

Laserspin frowned. "I'm going to keep an optic on it. You didn't receive the message of the Prime, I think?"  
Firesheaf shook his helmet, closed and opened his servos. "When...?"

"Yesterday. He calls all Autobots to some planet on the other side of the galaxy, Megatron is supposed to be there too. We are looking for a working ship, we have heard there are some left here," Laserspin explained, his arms to the side. "You didn't happen to see one?"

Purplebeam came to a stop next to them, she had heard the last words. "Maybe in the hangar that collapsed? If not there, then nowhere."

"We suspect that two of us are trapped in the lab. With your support, we can free them and search for a ship together," Firesheaf suggested, giving the whole group a signal to follow him.   
The tank that Laserspin had addressed with Hookhide grunted. "If there is enough space."

Firesheaf stopped abruptly and collided with Flipswitch, who made a choking noise. The Scout turned to Hookhide, optics bright.  
"The Prime will certainly not be thrilled that you are not in the command of Ultra Magnus," he hissed. "I didn't mention it yet, but that doesn't mean it's not very suspicious that you're walking around like mercenaries and don't seem to be afraid to be seen."

He stretched himself and let his blasters go online almost silently. "And don't think we can't defend ourselves just because we don't decorate ourselves with the spare parts of others."  
Hookhide let his engine roar and approached Firesheaf so close that the smaller mech had to lean his helmet back to look him in the face.  
Laserspin pushed between them furiously. "Not here."

The ruins suddenly seemed much smaller than before, too small. It wanted to squeeze the rotten building out of herself, no longer used to so much life in it. 

"Will you help us?" asked Firesheaf Laserspin, much to displeasure of the two tanks Hookhide and Viceburst. They didn't say anything, just stared at him with cold murder in their eyes. 

He should feel better, they had support now, they were safer than before. But Firesheaf didn't feel safe. A strangely suffocated feeling had appeared in him like a murky puddle, bubbling. It was agitated but silent, uncertain but fixed, and it could not be shaken off, not by glances to the sky and soothing thoughts. Perhaps because he knew he would go offline very soon.

"Let's not call it help." Laserspin looked into the round that had formed. "We have our own goals, they're just in the same place."  
The air could have been cut with a blunt blade. 

"But until our paths divide, we'll have to get into the lab and probably offline a few 'Cons,"" Joltline said, his helmetcocked. 

"Exactly."

Purplebeam uncertainly crossed her arms. "Don't you think they might have disappeared?"  
Laserspin blinked at her in disbelief, his dental plates derided. "Are you fighting the same war as me? Or are you just a lot younger than you look?"  
"Hm. I'm just saying. They achieved what they wanted, didn't they?"  
"If you think," Firesheaf interjected from the side, "that they just wanted to drive us away, then you are gullible. This is no longer a war. We are being hunted down."  
"Listen, I know Mech like them. There is a reason why th-"  
"No matter! That may have been the case in the past, but not anymore! Today it is no longer about the Senate... nor the caste system! I just want to survive, Purplebeam, nothing more! Just survive!"

"Now you both hold the edge!" Laserspin let his engines roar and stretched. "Obviously you don't have any experience leading a squad, so it's my turn now."  
Firesheaf wanted to protest, but he was cut off.  
"You there!" Laserspin pointed to Joltline. "Why do you think your mechas are still alive?"  
The old Mech blubbered a bit and looked up with cold optics from his seat on the dirty floor. "Because no one kills the two so quickly."  
"Hm. Well beautiful. You there," he ordered bluntly, pointing to Flipswitch. "You go back and watch the lab. Stay in cover. If they leave, report to me immediately. If they discover you, don't bring them here. Run away and hide. If nothing happens, stay there, we'll follow."

Flipswitch rose and saluted half-heartedly before pushing himself into the darkness with stiff movements. Firesheaf looked after him and wanted to say something, _I'm the Scout here_ , but he let it be. Flipswitch would get along and he wouldn't have much use here anyway. Perhaps that was even the intention behind the order…

He looked at Laserspin from his angle of optics. There was something he didn't like about the mech. Maybe it was his rough companions. Maybe their bad condition. Or the many weapons. But it was probably simply his gaze that seemed to drill into everything that he was meeting. What had this mech seen, what had he done that he saw a threat to his position in everything?

"Does anyone have a map here?"  
Firesheaf turned away and began to draw a rough map of the surrounding area in the middle of the ruins. They really didn't have time for such nonsense.

_He stared into the distance with tired optics while the horizon slowly merged with the gloomy sky. There was still thin smoke in the air. No briese moved, and so, despite the fall of the wall, it hung like a grey film in front of the night. Burning waves of pain rolled up and down his back, got stuck in the tips of his elytren and pricked in his feet._

_Broken wall panels had ripped open the left half of his body when the building had been shaken by an explosion, now he was half buried under a metal strut.  
The puddle of Energon had stopped growing, the bit that he had even had in himself had already leaked. The glittering sand under him was colored blue, whether someone had bled out here before, he could not say, but it was quite possible. Cybertron reconquered the Energon. _

_He leaned the helmet back in exhaustion and followed the sharp edges of the broken roof with his gaze. Would they kill him, or would he starve beforehand? Both were only a matter of time. At the latest when the acid rain began, then his spark would be erased. He briefly looked down, a faint flicker between his bristled breastplates. He fought against the upsurging feelings and stared back up into the hidden sky - no stars._

_As he slowly lost all feeling in his legs, he indulged in the tenacious stream of memories lurking in him. He imagined hearing careful steps in the emptiness of the landscape._


	4. Departure

Firesheaf hesitated only for a moment before pushing himself out of the illuminated ruins into the night.   
"Laserspin," he said to the bright green mech, who hadn't even turned around to him. He stood, swallowed by the darkness, with his back to them and did not answer.  
"How did you know we were here? I listened to you. You talked about us."

Still no reaction. Then... "We picked up rumours, like about the ship. You hear a lot of things when you let people talk," he replied softly, hesitating before every word as if he wasn't sure what to say. 

Firesheaf stepped next to him, searching for the glow of his optics, and then followed his gaze into the distance. Occasional lights burned there, perhaps fires, where Stanix had once proudly braved the inhospitable weather. Now, like all other cities on Cybertron, it was nothing more than a hull for wickedness.   
He crossed his arms and ejused a swell of air. "So the Prime, hm? What do you think of the whole story?"

Laserspin gave him a brief, nasty look and abstained from an answer. 

_Then don't answer me. Primus._  
Firesheaf rolled his optics and turned away, carried by his feet in the opposite direction of the lab. The cloud layer deep above his helmet was so thick that not even the outlines of the two moons could pass through. It was a pity, because one last time he would have liked to see the starry sky again. Or drank pure Energon. Maybe even visited the moon base Luna-1, because he had only been there once. At thart time all of Cbertron had glowed, a fine web of lights that engulfed the entire planet and blossomed in the cities. Now there were hardly any lights that were proof of life. 

The Scout strolled through the abandoned village and the coarse sand crunched quietly under his pedes. He briefly wondered what might have happened here and whether the remains of the dead were mixed under the rubble, but he immediately pushed that thought far away. He didn't want to spend his last moments with that.   
Primus knew that he had truly seen enough death for a single lifetime.

Okay, think. What exactly was the situation?

With high probability they had a traitor on their side. Why should the Decepticons have lurked for them if not because they knew they were coming?   
Steelglide and Grindlight were either trapped under the rubble or captured, the former being more apparent. Firesheaf didn't know the two mechas very well, but he was sure that no Decepticon who tried to lock them up would get away with their life.  
Then there was the strange Laserspin with his two rough companions who triggered this suspicious itching in Firesheaf. Looking for a ship because the Prime had sent a message...

A thought forced itself to the foreground, to which he had not given any attention before.  
What if Laserspin had revealed them to the Decepticons? 

He was not under the command of Ultra Magnus. He knew they were out there, and he wanted to get a ship from enemy territory! Who said that he hadn't just thought up the message of the Primes to lure them? Maybe he now wanted to deliver them in person and had sent Flipswitch away so that they were weakened!

Cold shivers ran through his protoform, he stopped dead in his tracks and listened carefully.  
No suspicious noises, not yet. But who knew what had already happened to Joltline and Purplebeam.

Immediately he turned around and ran back to the ruins as silently as possible, hoping that he would not stumble in the dark. Anxiety spread in him. What if he had cost them all their lives by bringing those three mechas to the base? It would be his fault if they were offline now!  
Before he arrived at the ruins, someone cut off his path out of the shadow. For a moment he wanted to point his weapon at the them, but then he realized that it was not Laserspin in front of him, but Flipswitch. The little Mech seemed exhausted and rested his servos on his knees as if he had worked out.

"How did you get here?" Firesheaf asked so perplexed that he almost forgot to lower his voice. He briefly scanned the blue frame of the mech, but he did not appear to be wounded.

"I tried to reach you," the mech whispered back, ventilation loud. "COMs didn't go through. Had to run all the way. Decepticons have gone, without prisoners. Tols Laserspin already. He wants to go right away." His bright optics scurry around as if they were looking for something.

Firesheaf frowned together. "I think Laserspin has betrayed us. It's safer if we play along, otherwise his friends shoot us right on the spot."

Flipswitch looked at him rigidly and understanding spread in his face as the pieces of the puzzle locked together. "Oh."

"You tell the others as we walk and I distract him."

"Okay."

The two walked silently back to the group and squeezed into the ruin. The hidden equipment was already stacked in the middle of the small room, a terribly small pile of ammunition and firepower. Laserspin sampled the whole thing with a critical eye. "It will have to work."

"We don't expect any resistance, do we?" Purplebeam squealed how Viceburst rubbed the dirt from an energy blade. "Why all of this?"

"You never know," Laserspin repeated a little more sharply than necessary and the femme did not respond to that.  
Firesheaf summed quietly. "What, we're just marching over there?"  
"Yeah."

Within a short time everyone was ready to leave and they gathered in front of the ruins. They extinguished the last light. The night rolled around them, the darkness deeper than ever before, an the Autobots crowded together as if they wanted to preserve the last bit of warmth that still emanated from their frames. Firesheaf felt his cables shudder together, but he quickly made the first step.

The way seemed longer than they all had in mind. At every step they had to be careful not to stumble, because although Cybertroniers had excellent night vision, they still needed some light to see their surroundings. Thanks to the storm clouds, there was not even starlight that could show them the way; they had to rely on the faint glow of their own optics. 

There had already been several times that Firesheaf's pede had become entangled in something that turned out to be a corpse in hindsight. Everytime he stumbled he looked down, often then someone stared back with dead optics. Inside the Scout twisted, but he knew that everyone else was going through the same thing and still remained silent. 

For the longest time it went on like that, only the dull sound of their steps and the scratching of her ventilation. Eventually, the first orange-red shimmer appeared behind the magnesium mountains and cast long shadows over the landscape.

Cybertron didn't have its own sun, although it once may have had one. The planet has been wandering through the universe since it was thrown out of its orbit shortly after its formation. But sometimes it roamed lonely suns and was then illuminated by their light - the only light source since the exhaustion of the small planet's natural energy reserves. 

The fact that the sun rose made walking much easier, they corrected their course and noticed that they were almost there anyway. Firesheaf assured himself by looking backwards that Flipswitch had told the other two Autobots of his assumption. The blue mech nodded confirmingly. 

The smoke that swirled from the rubble had still not quite subsided and surrounded the single-storey, long building like a dome. Rock-colored walls rose from the ground, smoothed out by winds that hadnot been agitated since stellar cycles. Although the laboratory was probably still from the early days of the war, it had a sinister evaporation, an aura of terror that united contradictory exclamations in the otherwise inconspicuous block. 

Further to the left was the small hangar, but the devoured inner retaining walls had been brought down by gunshots. As a result, the outer walls under the weight of the ceiling had simply folded inwards. The corners were still standing, but the rest had turned into coarse rubble. Under this rubble, large metal plates flashed out, which had not been visible from the outside before and now reflected the cloudy morning light.

Firesheaf's interior was knotted at the thought that Steelglide and Grindlight had to be somewhere down there, and his courage promptly sank. But Laserspin set in motion and headed straight for the collapsed hangar. The others followed him.

Two small ships stood there, a fast battleship with a crushed shell and a troop transporter, which seemed to have been scratched, but was otherwise in good shape. Laserspin victoriously clenched his servo and began to clear the rubble of it with his two companions. Firesheaf stood beside his own group and hesitated. 

"I'll check the surroundings," said Flipswitch, who seemed to feel very comfortable in his new role as a scout, and disappeared around the building.   
"Okay." Firesheaf looked around the room briefly and pointed to the right side of the ships. "There must have been the entrance. Purplebeam, Joltline, you start searching there. I'm going to the other side."

The two Autobots nodded and set to work as Firesheaf climbed over broken wall struts to get to the left side of the hangar.   
As soon as he was back on solid ground, he noticed the blue puddles of Energon that had spread there, forming lines the sand. He followed them with the optics and wanted to call for the others when he spotted the mech in the middle of all the metal.

_What, in the name of Primus...? ___

__His face was distorted into irritation, because he had never seen the dead mech at his pedes._ _

__His armour was of a washed-out blue and grey and had probably been beautiful once. Now it was shattered and perforated, no, the whole frame seemed strangely exhausted and fragile. Weak. A broken iron strut had ripped open the left side of the mech's chassis and even exposed his spark chamber. Firesheaf knelt next to the slender mech and looked carefully into the wound, but he could not see any light._ _

__With gentle movements he wiped the dust from the stranger's chestplate and found the Autobot symbol, albeit faded and peeled off._ _

__Firesheaf stared at the light grey face plates, the extinguished biolights under ihis closed optics, the pointy antennae on the sides of the helmet. He took the lifeless servo of the mech into his own and pressed it._ _

___Who are you? What are you doing here?_ _ _

__The irrepressible desire to shake the mech came up in him, to wake him up and to make sure that all would be well. But there would be no point .  
Deep-seated despair bubbled up in the scout and seemed to suffocate him, he had seen enough death! When was it finally enough?_ _

__Firesheaf turned around and stared through the gaping hole into the light of the rising sun, feeling the sky tremble above them. At least the mech had had a good view in his last moments. There were worse places to go offline.  
With a barely suppressed sigh, he turned around and jumped back when the shock jumped into all his limbs and catapulted his Spark into his voicebox._ _

__The blue mech stared back at him with wide optics._ _

__

__https://evidmid.tumblr.com/post/641002786367111168/my-weird-transformers-ocs-in-ugly-colours_ _


	5. Into the Darkness

Firesheaf suppressed a scream and crashed backwards into one of the broken wall panels. The mech in front of him said nothing, staring at him confused with large, light blue optics. More Energon ran out of his wound when he tried to get up.

The other Autobots seemed to had heard that something was wrong and pushed themselves through the debris to find out what had happened, but Firesheaf couldn't turn his gaze away from the pile of misery in front of him.  
" _You are alive_?"

The mech looked down slowly, tried to lift his servo and said quietly: "Yes."  
Carefully, the orange scout pushed himself back to his knees because there seemed to be no danger. He took another look at the big wound and grinded his dentas. "I don't think any melting plaster helps with that."  
"No."

"Firesheaf, what..." Purplebeam had made her way through the room and stared at the dried energon on the floor. "What happened?"  
Firesheaf ignored them, his full attention was devoted to the dying Autobot in front of him. Desperation and hope fought within him, but outwardly he was as calm as rarely before. He lowered his voice because that seemed appropriate and grabbed the servo of the mech he had pressed earlier.  
"Who are you?" the Scout asked.

The blue mech hesitated with an answer. He tried to get up again, but Firesheaf pushed him down with ease. His voicebox crackled briefly as the pain seemed to flare up again.   
"Dropstreak," he suddenly squeezed out and it sounded as if he hadn't said his name for a long time. He groped in the direction of Firesheaf's servo in the dust but immediately pulled it back as soon as they touched each other. 

Firesheaf lowered his helmet. "Dropstreak, there's nothing we can do for you."  
Dropstreak did not answer, but he understood. Though, when Firesheaf got up and turned away, something cramped in him and his vision blurred. But the little Autobot grabbed only a small object from the hip of one of his colleagues and returned with it, putting the semi-circular, yellow object on the ground in front of him.   
He immediately realized it was a grenade.

"I hope you understand that we don't..." Firesheaf began, pointing to the two-barreled blaster on his arm. It was obvious what he meant. "And I know I can't ask you to do that, but we're gone soon. Maybe you could wait."  
All looked up to the unstable remains of the ceiling.  
Dropstreak tried to say something, looking at the object in front of him, and closed his dental plates. He then gently reached out and drew it to himself, careful not to trigger it. He didn't break his silence or look up again so the Autobots turned away respectfully. Only Firesheaf couldn't turn away. The scout scurdered restlessly in the dust and put his helmet awkwardly as if he were listening to something.

Firesheaf knew exactly what he wanted to say, but he didn't say it out loud. Instead, he asked one final question.  
"Have you heard anything of two mechas here? We are looking for them."  
Dropstreak thought briefly, but then shook his helmet. "No. There was no one but me here in the hangar."  
"Thank you. I..." Firesheaf got up and pulleded his face plates to a short grimace but never finished the sentence. He turned around with a shudder and rushed to the other side of the hall to help the other Autobots work.

By the time he arrived at Purplebeam and Joltline they had already worked their way up to the entrance to the building. He banished Dropstreak from his thoughts and, together with Purplebeam, pulled the last struts from the gaping opening, Laserspin's presence burning in his back. Confused, they knocked the dust off their armor and started into the grey darkness of the long hallway that seemed to creep deep into the field in front of them. Small holes in the ailing ceiling threw hundreds of tiny columns of light onto the floor, just enough to detect smeared footprints in the thick layer of dust. Individual drops of Energon lined up lonely along them.

"They must have fled inside," said Joltline, who squinted over Firesheaf's shoulder. The Scout nodded and tried to build up a COM connection to Flipswitch but it immediately collapsed. It had to be the storm that no longer allowed communication even at a short distance. No wonder the Decepticons had left this laboratory. 

'We can't wait for him. They're hurt," Firesheaf muttered, toying with the thought of looking for the other Autobot that was still monitoring the area around the lab.   
"You go ahead and I'm going to get him," Joltline interrupted his thoughts. "We'll catch you up." 

The Wrecker turned around and disappeared with astonishing ease behind the metal plates cleared aside. Firesheaf nodded hesitantly and looked at Laserspin, who was still busy with the transport ship. No ond answered his gaze. 

The Scout pulled the small lamp out of his subspace, activated it and told Purplebeam to follow him. Together they stepped into the hallway.  
Temperatures here seemed to be a good bit lower than in the hangar. The walls were smooth and looked icy, the aura they had all felt before seemed to thicken with each step. Pain and despair seeped up from the ground. Firesheaf was almost as if he could hear the screams of long-dead mechas reverberating in the walls. What atrocities had Shockwave committed here? How many had fallen victim to his madness? 

Purplebeam didn't seem to be doing much better. She constantly turned the helmet as if she were listening to something with her servo clenched.   
Firesheaf turned around briefly and looked back to the smaller bright square from which they had come. The silence was as all-encompassing as if it were swallowing every sound, so he waited until they had gone around the first corner before raising his voice.

"We have to be careful. Flipswitch told you about my guess, but I'm pretty sure about it now. Maybe the Decepticons will return or Laserspin will make his friends do it... But-"

"Firesheaf?"

He turned around and noticed she had stopped. Next to it a narrow passageway, behind it something that seemed like a storage room. Merciful bent devices stamapered there, tips and blades, obviously only made to torture cybertrons. He tried not to memorize their forms.   
"They're not in there. Look, the traces continue here. What I wanted to say..." He wanted to go on, but Purplebeam called him back.

"Firesheaf!"

" _What is it_?"

Her face plates were hidden in the darkness, but the expression on it immediately made Firesheaf freeze.   
"Firesheaf..." she began hoarse. "Flipswitch didn't tell me anything!"

Dropstreak waited patiently for the Autobots to leave. The pain had subsided, his left side now completely numb. He didn't have to worry about what was happening now because everything would be over anyway.   
At last.  
He was just trying to see the outline of the sun, which slowly pushed behind the storm clouds thin on the horizon when the first shot was fired in front of the hangar.


	6. Out of the Labyrinth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Evil gremlin chapter hhhhhhhhhhh

"Firesheaf..." she began hoarse. "Flipswitch didn't tell me anything!"

Firesheaf thought his spark had to freeze. One or two kliks passed in which disbelief and understanding clashed together in his thoughts, then the horror, the realization, the despair so violently and so high crashed down in him. Lubricant accumulated in his optics. Completely detached from every material plane, he felt his reality tumbling down hills of despair.   
Flipswitch had lied. And there could be only one reason for this: He was the traitor. 

"Of course," Firesheaf whispered, staring into nothingness with big optics. The sun's rays from the ceiling became thinner until they disappeared completely, now only the artificial light in his servo illuminated the smooth hallway.   
Flipswitch had had all the information at any time. He could have passed them on with ease without being too noticeable. He had been back at the ruins much faster than he should have been, even if he had watched the Decepticons from a distance. But that...  
A single, muted shot sounded from a distance. The Scout closed his servo around the light cone of the lamp to dampen its glow. He pressed himself against the wall and signaled Purplebeam to do the same. 

"They're still here!" he whispered, his gaze wild.  
 _Traitor, one of us is actually a traitor! How long have many good mechas died because of him?_  
Unbridled rage, no, hatred boiled over in him. He wanted to grab and shake Flipswitch, put it against a wall and execute it, crush his helmet and see his spark erred, Primus, he wanted revenge! An Autobot that deselted to the Decepticons! How could you be so twisted?   
But he was not allowed to act impulsively now. They had to come out of this deadly trap first, everything else would follow later. 

The two of them ran deeper into the mouth of the building, deeper into the darkness. Quietly, they followed the trail from Energon and looked around again and again. The black holes in the walls, doors to laboratory rooms, scurrying past them, and from within dark figures seemed to peel out and greedily reach for them. Firesheaf bared his dentas and was suddenly very grateful for Purplebesam's presence. Without her, it seemed to him, he might have surrendered to the grip of the shadows

More than once, they cast frantic glances at each other, fearing them as if they had heard the voice of a dead mech or the distant screeching of a drill. Although they could only illuminate a small part of the floor, they noticed bals that the drops of Energon grew into small puddles, as if the associated wound had worsened.   
In the middle of a step, everything suddenly trembled around them. Both came to a halt, servos on the walls. The building shuddered like it was cramping.   
It was an explosion, they recognized that immediately. 

_Dropstreak?? But he wanted to wait... No. The Decepticons?_

Purplebeam pulled him to one side as the ceiling broke and coarse metal shards rained down on them. "We have to move on!"  
So they kept running.

Dropstreak groaned in resurgent pain. The building, the hangar! They would collapse!  
The explosion had turned the remaining walls to dust, it must have taken place right out the hangar. He couldn't see anything from his meager niche, but the ground swayed so the fight had to be close. After the first shot, the three grim-looking Autobots had stormed out. Salvos of gunfire had followed, but now they were silent.  
Quick steps crunched on the other side of the hangar, voices rang out.

Dropstreak clawed his way to the grenade as if his life depended on it, staring at the bending ceiling struts that now finally ripped off above him. In a last pointless attempt to escape them, he threw himself aside with all his strength - but it was not enough. It had never been enough.   
All the time in which he had tried to survive, all the escapes, the curses, the quarrels were pushed over each other, all the troubles he had endured should not have been for nothing! That wouldn't be fair!

It was the first and only time Dropstreak felt the irrepressible desire to experience another day alive.

The crumbling ceiling had made it a good chunk more difficult for them to move forward. The rickety scaffolding around them was now even more unstable than before and it looked as if the ceiling would fall on their helmet the next klik.   
Firesheaf went ahead, blaster ready for use. He was sure that Grindlight and Steelglide had to be nearby, but the only thing to hear was the quiet sound of drops.   
They reached an intersection, in four directions nothing but blackness. Someone could have been standing right next to them and they wouldn't've been able to see him. 

Purplebeam pointed to the ground, where distorted footprints turned to the right. When Firesheaf let the beam of the lamp shine down the aisle, something flashed not far from the intersection.  
They crept towards the reflecting object and the closer they got, the bigger it appeared. Not quite matching shapes and colors, they recognized the pale shimmer of shed energon.

It were Grindlight and Steelglide, leaning against the wall as if someone had draped them there. Instead of their faces, there were two sharp-edged abysses. Someone had shot them in the helmet and left them there with each other for company. 

Firesheaf couldn't turn his gaze away, even when he heard Purplebeam choking behind him. His vision began to blur and tilt at its edges as if someone had twisted the world. This image, along with many others, got burned into his mind forever, and as he stood there he knew it would haunt him in his darkest moments. If he were to experience other dark moments, of course, because someone was running towards them through the hallway. 

As if in a trance, Firesheaf turned around and looked down the black hallway, listening to the steps as if they came straight from his imagination. Tiny little biolights danced towards them, but he could not comprehend it, could not understand it, could not see it. Purplebeam had recovered enough to pull Firesheaf's lamp out of his servo and lit up the hallway.  
It was Laserspin, face distorted, stumbling over the floor. Dried stripes of Energon stuck to his armor but it didn't seem to belong to him. He ran with a servo on the wall to find his way in the dark and seemed relieved to finally see light again. For a crude moment, Firesheaf was amused by the fact that the previously so stoic Mech seemed to have actually lost his cool.

"Finally I found you! Fast, go, no time, go!" he hissed at them and made waving movements. Purplebeam grabbed Firesheaf and pulled him with her while she joined Laserspin. 

"Are they after you?", she asked, looking back at the two bodies on the ground.  
"I don't know, maybe. It's too dark. I'm not sure."  
Firesheaf moved by himself again and rubbed his face, still not clear in the helmet again. "Where are we going?"

Laserspin grabbed the lamp and took the lead while the two Autobots held their way behind him. "As far away as possible. There has to be another entrance, right?" He wasn't waiting for an answer. "We're looking for it now."  
"Won't they not expect us there? And where are the others?" 

Purplebeam had fluently assumed responsibility and was now trying to fill her knowledge gaps. She had a surprisingly strict tone in her voice, and anything in it suggested that authority was not as alien to her as one might have expected.   
"Viceburst and Hookhide are offline." Laserspin pointed to the slow-drying energon on his armor. "Joltline probably too. We heard the first shot and they intercepted us outside. There were four... Now there are three."

Purplebeam gave him a compassionate look that he either didn't notice or ignored.   
"Sorry for Hookhide and Viceburst," she muttered softly.  
"We weren't very close."  
Firesheaf pulled the optics limits together. "And you were the only one to escape?"

Suddenly the hallway in front of them ended and opened into a large room. The three Autobots stopped and while Laserspin loudly activated its ventilation, Firesheaf took the lamp back and began to walk down the walls. The fear of the shadows had given way to him, he just wanted to finish this whole endeavor, no matter what would. 

The room was larger than it had first appeared. Strangely reflective surfaces were spread over its walls, all of which seemed to be reinforced as if they were holding anything outside. Below each of these surfaces were desks with levers and buttons that had been arranged seemingly without any sense. It was in no way reminiscent of the smaller rooms they had passed by until now. This was more than atorture chamber.   
In the middle of the room, a strange staircase bolted to the ceiling, but he ignored it for the time being. Carefully, the bonze-colored scout approached the next reflecting surface. It reflected only part of the light, but he could see his own optics well on the black plane. Two blue marbles in the middle of a cold sea.  
Firesheaf carefully climbed onto the protruding desk and pressed against the glass. Only sparsely illuminated by the lamp appeared a small, a tiny room. Empty, four grey walls, a well-secured door on the opposite side. Firesheaf balanced on the next desk and peered into the room behind it. He looked exactly the same, cold and empty and evil. 

"Hey, can we get on the roof there?" asked Purplebeam, pointing to the spiral staircase in the middle of the hall. Laserspin tested the stability of the steps as Firesheaf slid back to the ground.   
"What are we supposed to do up there?"  
"Come out here, of course. At lest you can't get lost up there." Laserspin climbed the stairs now, one servo on the chunky railing, the other on the wall. "Besides, the Decepticons won't find us there too."  
Firesheaf crossed his arms. "Have you forgotten that everything is about to collapse here anyway?"  
"We're walking on the walls."  
The Scout gesticulated speechlessly with his arms, casting sharp shadows on the walls. Purplebeam looked skeptical too.

"If you somehow manage to stay on the walls, that's all well and good, but it won't hold me anyway." She hinted at her thick armor. "You already... you should go without me. I'll look for the exit down here."  
"Forget it!" Firesheaf quipped, putting his servos into his sides. "We're not going to leave anyone behind!" He took her servo and led her after him to the stairs on whichs other end Laserspin had arrived by now. Almost defiantly, he began to follow the green mech. "After all, we will be above the rubble and not below."

So, one by one, they pushed themselves up the narrow steps, glad to finally escape the dark depths of the lab.  
"And we were supposed to occupy that", Firesheaf muttered, looking over the railing. The darkness smiled back and he just shook his helmet. 

Laserspin pushed the unlocked hatch to the roof above him, slipped out and made way for the others. Firesheaf crawled behind and immediately felt the tingling of the air charged by the storm in all his sensors. It could only be a few Kliks until the clouds broke over them.   
The roof was flat and decorated only by individual outstanding antennas. The hatch through which they had come up did not seem to make any direct sense, there was no equipment or measuring stations up here, at least not anymore. The horizon was hidden behind a veil of foggy clouds. The laboratory suddenly seemed to look much smaller from the outside than it had from below. 

Purplebeam tested the stability of the ground with one foot, but it seemed to be able to support her weight. A little more relaxed, she looked around and pointed to faded traces of smouldering on the metal below them. "Maybe this was something of a landing zone? Not for shuttles, but for Seekers?"  
"Possible..." said Laserspin, staring into the distance, his optics empty.   
Firesheaf shook his helmet and took the first steps. "Seems to work just fine. Are you coming?"

**Author's Note:**

> Just wanted to get this out there and look if people like it. If you do, feedback in any form is always incredibly welcome!


End file.
